


Sick Day

by riot3672



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Sick Character, Sickfic, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, nurse pietro, nurse wanda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-09
Updated: 2015-09-09
Packaged: 2018-04-19 20:45:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4760453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riot3672/pseuds/riot3672
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thanks to his increased metabolism, when Pietro Maximoff gets sick, he only gets sick for four hours. If only his nurse was so lucky.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sick Day

Pietro hadn’t gotten sick once since his time with Strucker. He always figured some side effect of his increased metabolism was a rock solid immune system, and he sure wasn’t complaining.

Or, rather, it had him complaining a lot when he managed to get sick.

“Pietro, you’ve got to stay in bed,” Wanda said as she pushed him (rather forcefully) back into their bed.

It had been ten minutes since he’d fallen asleep during an Avengers meeting and woken up to find Wanda pulling a 101-reading thermometer out of his mouth. Steve, naturally, had dismissed him until he was feeling better, a nice phrase for “when you’re not contagious.” Somewhere along the way, Wanda got voted off the island to nurse him.

“What difference does it make if I’m up as long as I’m in the room?” Pietro muttered as he shifted in bed, turning over and changing minuscule positions of his legs and arms, nothing comfortable.

“Your body needs rest to fight this off. You’re wasting it.”

“I’ll get more.”

Wanda gave him a look. “You told me two minutes ago that the sight of food would make you puke. Got a new opinion?”

Pietro whined. “Fine, but… Ugh, this—I’m not supposed to stay still this long.”

“Relax. You got a day off training. Enjoy it.”

Yeah, because being unable to look at screens without getting dizzy, having to swallow constantly for fear his insides were ready to spill out, and sitting on the brink of fever hallucinations was the perfect state for enjoying himself.

“It is physically impossible for me enjoy anything right now.”

 Wanda leaned on her unoccupied side of the bed. “You could try out this thing called sleeping. Most people find it both non-strenuous and rewarding.”

“You just want to leave, don’t you?”

Wanda disappeared into their bathroom and returned with a wet washcloth. “Leave my wretched brother alone to brood and squirm? Never.” She twisted up the washcloth like a rope and pressed it to his forehead. He could’ve used something colder, but it still felt pretty good. “Is there anything else you need?”

“Could you close the shades? It might help me sleep.”

“Of course, m’love.”

She never used the cutesy nicknames, and for a moment, Pietro swore she’d said it as part of his fever hallucinations. “Thanks.”

She ruffled his hair. “Feel better.”

Surprisingly, all he had to do was let his fever delusions go and he was asleep. 

When he woke up, about an hour had passed and he felt…a great deal better. Still feverish, but he could eat. Was that normal? It’d been so long since he’d been sick that he couldn’t remember how symptoms usually came and gone.

“Hey Wanda?” Pietro said, scanning the room for his twin.

“Yeah?”

She was sitting in the corner of the room, where a bit of light had spilled through, eyes on a book. 

“I’m feeling kind of better. Could I…have some food?” 

“I’ll get you some soup.” She got up. “If you’re feeling that much better, by the way, you could probably stand to take some Tylenol. You’re still pretty warm.”

It probably didn’t take Wanda long to get the soup and medicine, but to Pietro, as everything did, it felt like an eternity. He found his mind wandering off to far off places he didn’t even think of going to normally. Not even dark places, like his parents’ death or his time with Strucker, or even that bizarre coma-like sleep state he was in while his body recovered from his bullet pounding in Sokovia. More like, sitting there staring at the wall, realizing that he and Wanda were Cersei and Jaime Lannister as Daenerys Targaryen and Khal Drogo or…or maybe Daario Naharis. Wanda would probably say Daario and he’d say Khal Drogo. But she was definitely Khaleesi—too cute for this world, but deadly. And he was just a badass.

What was that joke? What do you get when you push two twins together?

Yeah, that was it. What do you get when you push two twins together? A king. A stupid king that would cause people around it to slip into a painful cavern between the two twins, but that sounded like Joffrey anyway.

Wanda came back in and set a tray of noodle soup in front of him. 

“What do you get when you push two twins together?” Pietro asked.

Wanda wrinkled her brow. “What?”

Pietro grinned. “A king.”

He took a spoonful of soup and watched her react. No big reaction. “Lannister joke?”

“I have more.”

Wanda shook her head. “Pietro, you’re supposed to sleep at night, not search for this junk on the Internet.”

“How embarrassing is it to send text messages to wrong person? The other day, I wrote a text to my sister that said, “hey babe, thinking about you makes my cock hard can’t wait to see you.” Imagine how embarrassing it would’ve been to send that to wrong person.”

Wanda’s eyes widened for a moment, but she pulled it back. “If you’re practicing for Clint, don’t.”

“My sister talks online about sex with people she doesn’t know. So she thinks.”

Wanda hesitated. “Are you trying to seduce me with incest jokes?”

Pietro smiled. He wasn’t sure. That was an idea. Maybe. “Do you like it?”

He sat up abruptly, the soup only saved by a hex of Wanda’s. 

“I think you need some medicine.”

#

Pietro didn’t know if it was his powers or Wanda, but he felt back to 100% within three hours. Bam, done, happy to come to dinner that night. Sure, Tony tried to get him to admit that he’d been faking it, but it eventually shifted into a nice conversation about Pietro’s powers, and how the four hour flu was possible. 

Either way, he turned in early that night. They were apparently “going hard” the next morning, and Pietro had spent enough time with Steve Rogers to know that had nothing to do with getting extremely drunk. Wanda turned in with him.

“Thank you, by the way,” Pietro said as they climbed into bed.

Wanda smiled. “Anything for you. I should be thanking you—four hour flu. And they call me weird.”

Pietro smiled back. “The four-hour flu still falls under the ‘fast’ column. Now, if you get sick and start, I don’t know, seeing the future or something, then _that_ will be weird.” He looked her over. He knew she hadn’t done it on purpose, but she was wearing a nightgown instead of her usual t-shirt and pajama shorts. It’d be wrong of him to not respond accordingly. “Can I thank you for your help today?”

He settled his hand on her knee. 

“I don’t know, Pietro. What if you’re still contagious?”

“I don’t have to touch your face.”

He slid his hand up, just enough to push the fabric on top of his middle fingernail. 

“Do you want to?”

“Yes.”

She smiled. “Do your worst.”

“I will, just don’t hex me.”

He flicked her nightgown out of his way, and kissed her thigh. 

“Is the door locked?”

Pietro chuckled. “Like I’d ever let the assholes outside take a second of my time with you.”

He got to work.

#

There was indeed a God, because “go hard” day was replaced by Tony conducting experimental drills with Pietro and Wanda. An hour in, and Pietro had gotten to sit around or run laps while Tony worked with Wanda. He didn’t even mind when Tony called him up and pointed to a dummy he’d set up in the middle of the field.

“So I filled that thing with corn syrup. You know, a fake human body,” Tony said. “I want you to just run at that thing, like it’s one of Ultron’s robots.”

Pietro wrinkled his brow. “Why?”

“I want to see how deadly you are. Humans are destroyed when they get run over by trains, so what would getting hit by you do?”

It _was_ an interesting question, and one worth answering. 

He gave himself enough space for a running start, and ran full speed into the dummy. He and Wanda had started watching a bunch of American movies, and he couldn’t help but feel like he was participating in a football drill, bulldozing this thing to the ground.

Bulldozing, of course, being an understatement. The dummy started to leak the moment it made contact with Pietro’s body, and he couldn’t save himself from the spray when the dummy hit the grass. 

He stopped and pivoted, eager to get a good look at the damage. 

The corn syrup had splattered everywhere, forming a crater of red in the grass. The head was off the body, as well as most of its limbs.

Tony came up to the scene and nodded. “Imagine if you’d run him into a wall.”

“I feel like the answer to this could’ve come from those bugs that hit your windshield while driving.”

“I just had to confirm.” Tony glanced at him. “You’d be covered in viscera right now.”

Pietro looked himself over. It’d be a fair amount of human insides. “Good thing my uniform isn’t white, then.”

“By the way, did you and Wanda ever figure out how to ride tandem?”

Pietro glanced at Wanda. She’d been particularly quiet his whole session. “Do you want to?” he asked her.

She frowned, but before she could say anything, Tony stepped in. “Whoa there, Sonic the Ass-Hog. Requirement. I got you out of Capsicle’s boot camp. C’mon, Hermione Granger, it won’t be long.”

“You know, I really shouldn’t dignify your stupid nicknames,” Pietro commented.

“Those names are already in F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s system. Get used to it.”

Wanda shrugged and climbed onto Pietro’s back. Wanda seemed hotter than usual, her hands a little slick as she wrapped her arms around his neck.

“Do you have a target in mind?” Wanda asked. “The whole point of riding tandem is to mimic the powers of a teleporter.”

Tony turned around a full 180 degrees to look for someone to use. No one was around. Pietro waited, _waited_ for Tony to say they could shoot him, but he just set up the broken dummy and gave them a thumbs up. 

“Strapped in tight?” Pietro asked Wanda.

“Yeah.”

No snappy comeback. He patted her leg before taking off. 

He ran a couple hundred yards before slowing down to a skidded stop. Wanda shot off a hex at the dummy, and Pietro was running to a new spot the second the energy left Wanda’s fingers. He stopped again, a little less time spent slowing down. Wanda was usually pretty tough, and they’d already found her limits. She shot off her hex, and he moved to a third position.

Wanda didn’t shoot off a hex. He waited, one second, two seconds, three seconds, but got nothing. 

Before he could look over to her, think to ask what was going on, Wanda threw up. 

He jumped back instinctually, but the damage was already done, most of it running down the right side of his chest. Mercifully, she finished quickly, falling limp doll face against his shoulder. He took a few steps back and knelt down to let her off him.

“Shit,” she muttered as he turned around to face her.

“Are you okay?” he asked. She was at least five shaders paler than usual, sweat beading her hairline, body shaking. 

“Must be what you had.”

How could he have been so stupid? Of _course_ the contagious period would’ve been more than a few hours. He’d let her sleep in the bed with him without changing his pillowcase. He looked to her again. She always looked vulnerable to him, him only barely able to drop it while he watched her fight, but she looked positively fragile. As gently as he possibly could, he scooped her into his arms and got to his feet. 

“Is she okay?” Tony asked as Pietro passed him on his way back to their room.

“I think she got whatever I had yesterday.”

At least Tony gave some honest effort to hide his knee-jerk disgust. “You gonna cover her?”

“Yeah. Might as well keep exposure minimal.”

“Okay. Tell F.R.I.D.A.Y. if you need anything.”

Wanda seemed on the brink of consciousness as he walked her back, her head against his the non-soiled side of his collarbone, arms curled into her chest. 

“Sorry, sis,” he said.

“No, I’m sorry. Your shirt…”

They could’ve gone in those circles forever.

Pietro locked the bedroom door behind them, and they each changed, him into street clothes and her back into pajamas. Her movements were sluggish, but he still found his eyes settle on her soft grace as she kicked off her pants, removed her bra without taking off her shirt— He shook his head. He had to be in nurse mode, not horny mode. 

“Anything specific you want?” he asked as she climbed into bed and rolled herself into the blankets.

“No…I’m just tired.”

“‘Kay.”

He sped off, grabbed a water bottle, ice pack, and gatorade from the kitchen, and returned to Wanda. He cracked open the water, dropped it by her bedside, and moved to clean the thermometer Wanda had been using with him. 

Despite his speed, Wanda was asleep before he could ask her where she wanted her temperature taken. He wondered what she’d do if he just…stuck the thermometer in her ear or whatever you were supposed to do. She’d done mouth with him, but he wasn’t so sure he could do that without waking her up. 

After quite some hesitation, Pietro leaned forward with the thermometer. Wanda’s hand shot out and grabbed his wrist, her eyes fluttering open.

“Pietro, just ask…” she said.

He gave her a sheepish grin and stuck the thermometer under her tongue. She was at 102. Okay, something he’d like to get down, but he could suffice placing the ice pack on her forehead until she could stomach a fever reducer. Wanda mumbled a thank you for the cool-down and fell back asleep.

He wrung his hands, bobbed his leg up and down. What was he supposed to do? There wasn’t anything to do except maybe try to hand scrub the stains out of his clothing, but that was pretty low on the to-do pile. He felt trapped in the room, but if he went outside, Steve would make him go hard, and that _definitely_ wasn't good.

So, he’d stay in the room. Fine. He could…read.

The only book he owned, Alan Moore’s _Watchmen_ , was tempting, but he could also get through that in about half an hour. Wanda had a lot of books he hadn’t read, though. He just…needed something to last him several hours. He skimmed right over all her nonfiction books. But, otherwise, she just had a bunch of romance novels and high fantasy. Some thick Stephen King books, but nothing long enough, or that he hadn’t already stolen from her to read while she went out shopping with Natasha. It was going to be a serious contest between some Stephen King book with a car on the cover and _Twilight_. He kept his dignity and picked the haunted car.

By the time Wanda woke up, the sun had gone down and Pietro had gone through four Stephen King books and was at least an inch into a brick Edgar Allan Poe collection.

“How you feeling?” he asked.

She pushed the hair stuck to her face away. “Same.”

“Still, I’d sip some water. No need for a hospital visit.”

“How long has it been?”

Pietro glanced at the clock. “Five hours.”

She groaned and fell back into the pillows. “So much for an actual four-hour flu.”

“Aw, Wanda, you’ve survived normal twenty-four hour flus before. You got this.”

She cracked a smile. “All I remember about us getting sick as kids was how you always missed the bucket, but then Mom would give you extra attention, so you started doing it on purpose. You were probably still pulling that stunt before they died.”

“And you’d just sob uncontrollably until you passed out.”

“Well, thank God we both got over those habits.”

Pietro hesitated. “If I’m keeping you up…”

“You’re not. I’m just…not sure I’m all that interesting right now. Half my thoughts don’t make sense.”

“I think that makes you more interesting. Prophetic dreams.”

“ _I_ think the Stephen King is seeping into your brain.”

Pietro tried to get Wanda to take some medicine, but nothing interested her past the water and the gatorade, and he was too much of a pushover to make her experiment. They talked about a whole lot of nothing. Like, a whole lot of absolutely _nothing_ , conversations that would go from why she even owned a copy of _Twilight_ to discussing the possible effects of Pietro replacing weed with horse tranquilizers to Pietro actually telling her incest jokes and Vladimir Putin conspiracy theories without her calling him a loser. 

She slept a lot otherwise, and he left her exactly once to microwave himself a dinner and stock up on granola bars for their room. 

Right when he was getting vaguely sleepy, Wanda turned on the TV. She still refused meds, and her brain had finally caved into feverish mush. Objects would lift into the air, and Pietro would have to bark her name at least three times to get them to drop. When she randomly selected TeenNick as their go-to channel for 9 pm viewing pleasure, she flat out hexed the remote to the ceiling and refused to let him do anything about it. 

Some teen drama show called _Degrassi_ was on. Neither of them had ever seen or heard of it, but it did manage to go from horrible to exceedingly interesting.

“Fuck, Wanda, the twins are making out,” Pietro said as if his sister wasn’t a zombie watching the show right next to him.

“Too short. Disappointing. We could do that, though.”

He knew his sister would either regret or not remember this conversation once her bug passed, but he grinned. “Let’s do it. Stark’s next party, you get drunk and kiss me for the tabloids.”

“Steve would kill us.”

“ _Steve_ would put us in time-out.”

“Which wouldn’t accomplish much.” 

Pietro glanced up at the screen. “Looks like Kissed-Back is siding with Incest-Instigator. Maybe they go there.”

“Still think Luke and Leia made out longer.”

“But that was sibling unknown. This is knowing.”

Pietro held his theory for about twenty minutes, when the idiot who decided which shows would follow each other put on an episode where the female twin who made out with the male twin revealed she was a lesbian.

“Cheap!” Pietro called out when the episode ended. “Pussies.”

“At least the Lannisters are still going.”

“Why aren’t we watching that?”

Wanda looked up at the screen, and stopped responding. Pietro looked back to the screen, and found it was playing some ‘90s cartoon that he…vaguely recognized.

Whoa. Months watching American television, and Pietro hadn’t encountered a show he and Wanda had watched as kids once. It was some cartoon about beavers, and it got into LSD territory after like…two minutes. 

“Wanda…” Pietro said, unsure of anything to say besides “spoot,” whatever the fuck that was.

Wanda wasn’t responding. No, she was sitting up straighter, eyes half open, mouth a little slack, attention 100% on the screen. 

The beaver show ended, and a show about a cat attached to a dog started. It never really got better, but neither of them tried to change the channel. Or sleep. 

“Wanda…” Pietro tried again.

He glanced at the clock. 4 am. He should be sleeping. He should give Wanda some medicine so she could sleep in peace, because at that point, she genuinely looked so out of it that she might as well be on shrooms. 

He crawled across the bed and touched her cheek. “Wanda, you in there?”

She startled, the remote dropped onto the bed, and Wanda put the back of her hand over Pietro’s. God, she was hot. 

“Your hand feels so good,” Wanda mumbled.

“You’re burning up, so anything will feel good.”

Suddenly, she started to cry. 

“I hate this. God, so much. It’s like being back with Strucker all over again. I can’t think, can’t…Please, Pietro. Make it stop.”

He and Wanda had been exchanging stories and experiences from their time separated with Strucker, but Pietro couldn’t help but feel like the tug in his chest wasn’t enough pain for what Wanda was expressing. He knew, to some extent, of course, about how Strucker had watched her with a clipboard as she clawed at her bed and screamed for the voices and hallucinations her powers began as to stop. He knew how Strucker solved Wanda’s mental breakdowns by pumping her with so much sedative that she sat down and let the powers work, frying her brain in the process. But this fear of it, the fear of the noise was new. 

He let her press his hand against her skin and pressed his forehead to the top of her head. “I can make it stop, but you’ll have to take a fever reducer. That’s all this is, fever delusions. Promise, it won’t be like Strucker. Just make you sleepy. You want that, don’t you? You must be tired.” She nodded. “Okay. Do you think you could eat something? The medicine we have might be a little strong on its own.”

Wanda took a dose of Tylenol with a saltine and a swig of water, and nestled against him as they waited for the medicine to take effect. Pietro turned off the TV and lights and resisted shifting. Usually, Wanda would be the one keeping him still and comforted, but tonight he’d have to man up and help his little sister. At least she liked him running his hand up and down her back. For a moment, he felt calm. The most calm he’d been for the past twenty-four hours. 

“I love you, Pietro,” Wanda said.

Pietro smiled. “I love you too.” He kissed her forehead, already getting cooler. “Sleep tight, m’love.”

He’d trade hours of suicides with Steve “Capsicle” Rogers just for that moment. 

 


End file.
